


Anyone You Want

by GlassRose



Category: Kings
Genre: Gen, TW: Blood, TW: Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-22
Updated: 2014-05-22
Packaged: 2018-01-26 02:00:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1670567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GlassRose/pseuds/GlassRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You're him, aren't you?"<br/>"You gonna freak out on me?"<br/>"The lights are down. Be anyone you want."<br/>Jack should have listened.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anyone You Want

**Author's Note:**

> This story includes suicide and blood in the first few paragraphs.
> 
> I do not own the characters but as the author of the story I do not want this posted anywhere else without my explicit permission.

Jack had never asked for details but he wondered now how Joseph had done it. Slit his wrists and bled out, maybe, or a bottle of sleeping pills. Probably the latter. Morbid thoughts, but Jack had so little to distract him now from the one thing he couldn't stop thinking about. The problem was how. He had cracked open a safety razor to remove the blades yesterday, but he felt guilty about Lucinda. She didn't deserve to be the one to walk in on him. There were no other options, though, none that he could bear, so he waited until she went to bed for the night and locked himself in the bathroom with a paper and pen.

_I have been locked up my entire life, and I need to be free. Lucinda didn't know. Tell Michelle I'm sorry, and that I love her. You couldn't accept who I was and you wouldn't give me what you told me my whole life I was going to have. I didn't know how to want anything else, no matter how unfit I was to be king. I won't give you an heir. This family is poison and deserves to end. By the time you read this, I will be with the one person who saw who I was and loved me for it. Don't try to save me. I was dead before the razor touched my wrists._

When Jack had been captured by Gath, he was terrified they would kill him. None of those nerves came out to play now. There was simply a quiet relief that everything would be over soon. He stared at the razor for a minute before calmly drawing it across his left wrist, blade biting deep. The blood welled up and flowed out of him, into the bathtub, down the drain. He cut again and again, left arm shaking badly as the razor opened his other wrist. It was astonishing how mild the pain was in comparison to the knife that had been sitting in his heart since that awful day when the queen had informed him of Joseph's death. Jack let his arms drop and watched the blood flow as the world went fuzzy until finally it turned to black.

 

Jack was sitting on the steps of a front porch with a beer in his hand. He remembered this moment from when the lights were cut throughout the city, but the sun was shining, and there was no city, just a front porch on a lonely townhouse in the middle of some vaguely familiar countryside. He turned to his right, where the woman with long hair and a hat sat one step up, drinking from a brown bottle. She nodded at him. He frowned. "I'm dreaming?" he asked.

"Nah." She set down the bottle. "You are down for the count. The whole count. Slit your wrists. Ouch."

"I know you. You were the one who said I could be anyone I want."

"You should have listened to me."

"I did."

"For like two hours, yeah. Oh, I'm not blaming you for what happened after that. A person makes a choice that big, well, that's on them, not you. But then you made some choices you didn't like, so…." She shrugged.

"Are you God?" he asked.

She laughed. "I guess so, although I must admit there are some fascinating books out there about me that are not canon."

"I…I don't know what to say."

"I wasn't expecting you so soon. Free will is a funny thing. I was hoping the story would play out differently. But Lasile's choice, well, that definitely changed the shape of things. Poor child. Such a beautiful soul."

Jack swallowed and looked down.

"It's all right," she said. "I'm not your father. You don't have to be scared of me."

He looked up, confused wonder in his eyes.

"Jack Benjamin," she sighed. "I sometimes wonder that I fit so much in one body."

"So much?"

"You're so…complicated. I never know what you're going to do. Whether you'll make the ethical choice, or try to save your own, or just defend yourself. You're so unpredictable."

"I…I didn't know what you wanted."

"Was I so unclear? Well, maybe you're right. I was pushing things in a certain direction, but free will will always have out, and I could not stop Joseph from dying, and I suppose that confused the path. Sorry about that. Either way, you have to consider your decisions."

Jack searched her face for anger or judgment, but it was devoid of anything but compassion and understanding. "I'm not a strong person," he murmured.

"You had a lot of difficult choices to make in the last few months. Did you feel good about them?"

"I wish I could say I did my best to do right by you and everyone," Jack said, dropping his gaze. "But you know that's not true."

She smiled. "Jack, beloved, that was never your problem." She put a hand on his cheek, forcing him to face her. "If you had done right by yourself, the rest would have come. You think I didn't speak to you, but I did." Her thumb gently wiped away a tear rolling down his cheek. "Your father told you if you were to be king, you could not be as God made you. But I made him king. And I made you just as you are."

He couldn't hold back a sob as she wrapped her arms around him and held him close. "I would not have had you as king, but not for that reason. I had other plans for you. Perhaps another lifetime, my child."

"What happens now?" Jack whispered, sniffling. "Hell? Purgatory?"

"What makes you think I would subject any of my children to such torment as they dream awaits them?"

"I killed people."

"You did. And you shouldn't have. But you tried to learn. And now, you know many things you did not know when you entered this life. You can rest, and when I think you are ready, you will try again. Be at peace." She released him, smiling, and pointed. "Go."

Jack stood up and stared down the path. He looked back at her, unsure.

She rolled her eyes good-naturedly. "Don't keep him waiting."

Jack ran.


End file.
